Resources for Research and Doctoral Students

separate page is available which gives research support information to academic staff.

Research students may also find the Research Policies and Regulations page of interest.

ALLs are available to provide help and advice on finding and using research material available in London Met’s Libraries, obtaining material from other Libraries, and using other Libraries and archive collections. If you need help identifying resources for your research please email or make an appointment with your ALL.

See The Special Collections section of our Library website.

On Weblearn, within the Library Matters section, we have created a specific resource called Research Matters to support you in finding things for your research.

JournalTOCs is a tool which you can use to set up email alerts for new issues of specific journals. This site currently contains Tables of Contents for just over 36,000 titles, including nearly 18,000 Open Access publications.

Many of the databases to which the Library subscribes have alert services. It is usually necessary to set up a (free) personal sign-in, additional to your London Met login, before setting up an alert. See the relevant  Subject guide for a list of databases in your subject area. Google Scholar also offers alerting options for new citations.

Doctoral research students may request up to ten interlibrary loans per academic year via the catalogue. These are funded by the Research and postgraduate office (RPO). There are additional fees for renewals and overdue loans which must be paid by the borrower. The British Library will invoice for the non-return or late return of books.

  • Minimum charge of £1.00 per item per day for the late return of books and theses.
  • If unreturned within 5 days of the due date, you may be subject to a British Library invoice for a minimum of £182.80 which includes an admin charge.

A good way to consult materials not held at London Met is to visit the British Library. The British Library has a number of e-resources now available for use in their reading rooms, as well as the traditional printed materials. See the British Library’s website for visitor information, their catalogue, and a list of e-resources available. Please note that you need to register for a Readers Pass and this requires a specific ID. Also, a significant proportion of the collection is held off-site and takes 48 hours for delivery.

Other university libraries. There will be times that you will need to visit other UK libraries as part of your research, whether it is to consult their printed materials or to use a library that is physically closer to where you live. Please check our guidance on using the SCONUL Access scheme to visit other libraries. 

Please also see the Library’s Subject guides for information about other specialist libraries in your subject area.

Where a book is needed to support your research studies and it is not currently available via the Library Catalogue, you may place a request using this form. We cannot guarantee that the titles will be purchased as we have to manage the available funds, but we will give careful consideration to all recommendations from postgraduate research students.

The main UK source for doctoral theses is EThOS, from the British Library. Please see the library page Theses and open access repositories for detailed information on finding UK and international theses.  If you wish to request a print thesis in our collections at Holloway Road Library that is not yet digitised, please complete a Thesis copyright declaration form and we will notify you when it is ready for collection.  All print theses are reference only and cannot be removed from the Library.

For information and links to guides about different referencing styles, see our Referencing page.

There is free software that can help you to store and organise your references and produce bibliographies. Library Services encourages the use of Zotero and the Academic Liaison Librarians are able to offer sessions on its use.

  • Zotero is an open-source tool, originally for use with the Mozilla Firefox browser, which can be freely downloaded to your Windows, Mac or Linux computer. It also has extensions for use with Google Chrome and Safari browsers. You can download a standalone version and sync it to your Zotero account when using any shared computer. When using your own computer, sync Zotero to retrieve and incorporate changes made on another computer. Plug-ins can be downloaded for use with Word and LibreOffice when producing your in-text citations and bibliographies. Zotero has the ability to help you connect to and share references with other researchers.

  • Mendeley is compatible with Word, LibreOffice and BibTeX. It can work on desktop, web and iOS devices, and allows you to sync across devices. It also has the facility for you to network and share with other researchers.

    Guides for getting started with all of these tools are available on their websites. Your ALL may have experience of using one or more of these programmes should you need assistance.

See information on SPSS and Nvivo on the Software for students page.

For guidance on where to publish and how to evaluate journals, please visit the Think.Check.Submit website.

The publisher, Springer, gives an introduction to the Open Access Green and Gold models.

Another term that you may see is 'hybrid journal' this refers to a publication that makes content available via both open access and traditional subscription methods. Some articles may be available via Open Access as a result of paying article processing charges (APCs) and the remaining articles will require a subscription to the journal for access to be provided.

Background to the Institutional Repository

The London Met Repository was established in 2015 to serve as the University’s open access repository for research outputs.

The repository is a showcase and brings the work of London Met academics to the attention of a much greater audience, both within academia and the general public, thus enhancing the profile of the University’s academics on both a national and international level.

Open Access (OA) refers to free, unrestricted access to scholarly content. Many funding bodies are mandating that where their funds are used the output has to be made open access. Open Access can be applied to both journal articles and monographs.

A selection of open access e-journals.

Bentham Open Bentham Open publishes over 100 plus peer-reviewed open access journals. These free-to-view online journals cover all major disciplines of science, technology, medicine and social sciences.
Bioline International Bioline International provide open access peer reviewed bioscience journals published in developing countries.
BioMed Central BioMed Central is an STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) publisher of 276 peer-reviewed open access journals.
BMJ Open BMJ Open is an online, open access journal, dedicated to publishing medical research from all disciplines and therapeutic areas.
Co-Action Publishing Co-Action Publishing is home to over 30 Open Access journals spanning a range of academic disciplines.
Dialnet (Spanish Journals) Arts and Sciences Open Access journals in Spanish.
Directory of Open Access Journals DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
European Geosciences
Union
Open access peer-reviewed journals in the geosciences and planetary sciences.
Free Medical Journals Open access to medical content.
HighWire Free Online Full-
text articles
A leading ePublishing platform, HighWire Press partners with independent scholarly publishers, societies, associations, and university presses to facilitate the digital dissemination of more than 3000 journals, books, reference works, and proceedings. Note: latest issues may be embargoed.
Hikari Publishers of Science, Technology and Medicine journals.
Hindawi Publishing Corporation Hindawi Publishing Corporation publishes over one hundred peer-reviewed, open access journals in the fields of science, technology, and medicine.
Indian Academy of Sciences Indian Academy of Sciences publishes several open access ejournals.
Intech Open Access journals in Science, Technology and Medicine.
Internet Library of Early Journals ILEJ makes available substantial runs of digitised 18th and 19th century journals.
Internet Scientific
Publications (ISPUB)
ISPUB is a publishing house which offers free access to over eighty ejournals on various medical topics.
Nature Communications Nature Communications is an open access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences and has an Impact Factor of 10.742. Note: only submissions received after 20th October 2014 are open access.
Open Humanities Press Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory.
PeerJ PeerJ publishes the world's scientific knowledge through open access licensing.
PLOS PLOS publishes a suite of influential journals from all areas of science and medicine that contain rigorously reported, peer reviewed Open Access research articles.
Policy Commons Access policy content from IGOs, NGOs, think tanks and research centres. There is a directory of 16,000 policy organisations and the platform covers more than 7000 topics. Register to find content.
Portico Over 91 million journal articles available.
Project Euclid Project Euclid provides free access to journals, conference proceedings and monographs in the field of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics.
Sage Open SAGE Open is a peer-reviewed, "Gold" open access journal from SAGE that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format.
SpringerOpen SpringerOpen includes Springer’s portfolio of 160+ peer-reviewed fully open access journals.
Virginia Tech Digital Library and Archives Digital Library and Archives (DLA) provides access to scholarly electronic journals that are peer-reviewed, full text and accessible without cost.
Wiley Open Access Wiley Open Access publishes authoritative peer reviewed open access journals across many research disciplines.

A selection of open access e-books.

Directory of open access books Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service that points to Open Access books that can be found elsewhere.
Bloomsbury Open Content Bloomsbury ebooks in a range of disciplines.
Bookboon Bookboon focuses on publishing educational material for students and business professionals.
Brill Open Established publishing house providing ebooks, mostly for the Humanities.
Clacso Ebook content from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences.
Co-Action Publishing Co-Action Publishing is an international Open Access scholarly publisher with a portfolio of peer-reviewed journals and books spanning a range of academic disciplines.
Computers and Composition Digital Press Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP)is committed to publishing innovative, multimodal digital projects.
Digital Culture Books An imprint of the University of Michigan Press dedicated to publishing innovative work in new media studies and digital humanities.
Electronic Poetry Center A central gateway to resources in electronic poetry and poetics.
Flying Publishers

Free medical content.

Global Text Project Publishing open content electronic textbooks that are freely available from this website.
Hathi Trust Digital Library Hathi Trust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitised from libraries around the world.
Hikari Hikari is a publisher of international journals and books in science, technology and medicine.
HSRC Press The Human Sciences Research Council conducts large-scale, policy-relevant, social-scientific research for public sector users, non-governmental organisations and international development agencies.
Intech InTech is a pioneer and world's largest multidisciplinary open access publisher of books covering the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine.
Internet Archive and Open Library The Internet Archive is a non-profit project that was founded to build an Internet library.
National Academies Press Over 5000 titles from the US National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council to read online or download in PDF format.
NCBI Bookshelf Provides free access to books and documents in life science and healthcare, (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine).
OAPEN The OAPEN Library contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Online books page The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet.
Open Humanities Press Open Humanities Press is an international, scholar-led open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought available worldwide.
O'Reilly open books O'Reilly has published a number of Open Books--books with various forms of "open" copyright--over the years.
Portico Over 1.4 million books available.
Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks.
re.press Publishes work in contemporary philosophy.
Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works The Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
UCL Press UCL Press is the UK's first fully Open Access university press.

A selection of open access resources.

African Digital Research Repositories A list of known African repositories compiled by the International African Institute.
Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) BASE is one of the world's most voluminous search engines especially for academic open access web resources.
CORE JISC database called Core for searching Repositories CORE (COnnecting REpositories) aims to facilitate free access to scholarly publications distributed across many systems.
Dimensions Containing over 117 million publications as well as funding information and datasets.
Europe PubMed Central Free information resource for biomedical and health researchers.
JURN JURN has been established since 2009 as a curated collection of Open Access journals and books using Google search functionality.
OAIster A union catalogue of OA records harvested from collections worldwide.
OpenDOAR OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories.
Organic Eprints Organic Eprints is an international open access archive for papers related to research in organic agriculture.
PubMed Central PubMed Central® (PMC) is a free archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
Shared Research Repository Find research produced by staff at the British Library, National Museums Scotland, British Museum, (MOLA) Museum of London Archaeology, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Tate.

The Library has created some lists of useful resources for researchers, arranged by topic:

Library resources for researchers

Funding and getting published: resources for researchers

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